The Doll - Bolesaw Prus [54]
He mechanically eyed the unusual countenance of the lady choosing a dressing-case. She was modestly dressed, her hair drawn back smoothly. Deep sorrow was etched upon her face, which was both white and yellowish; bad temper lurked in her tight lips, and anger or sometimes humiliation glittered in her downcast eyes. She was speaking in a low and mild voice, but bargaining more than any miser. This case was too expensive, that too cheap; this plush would fade, the leather would wear off that, and here rust was showing on the fittings. Lisiecki had already retreated, Klein was resting, and only Mraczewski was talking to her as if he knew her.
Just then the door of the shop opened and a still more original individual appeared. Lisiecki was to say of him that he looked like a consumptive whose whiskers and moustache had begun to sprout in his coffin. Wokulski noticed that this customer had a gaping mouth and large eyes behind dark spectacles, from behind which still greater absent-mindedness peered.
This customer entered while terminating a conversation with someone outside in the street, and at once withdrew to bid goodbye to his companion. Then he came in again, only to retire once more, raising his head as if to read the sign over the door. He glanced accidentally at the lady—and his dark spectacles dropped.
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed.
But the lady turned away convulsively to the dressing-cases, then sank into a chair.
Mraczewski hurried over to the newcomer and, smiling ambiguously, inquired: ‘What can we do for His Excellency?’
‘Cufflinks, d’you see…ordinary cufflinks, gold or metal… Only, d’you see, they must be shaped like a jockey’s cap and—with a whip.’
Mraczewski opened the case containing cufflinks.
‘A glass of water!’ the lady cried in a feeble voice.
Rzecki poured some from the carafe and handed it to her sympathetically. ‘Madam is ill? Perhaps a doctor…?’
‘I’m better…’ she retorted.
The Baron was inspecting cufflinks, his back ostentatiously turned towards the lady. ‘Perhaps links in the form of a horse-shoe would be better, sir?’ Mraczewski asked. ‘I think these would suit Your Excellency, or these… Sporting gentlemen only wear sporting emblems, but they like a change too…’
‘Tell me, please,’ the lady suddenly turned to Klein, ‘what use are horse-shoes to a person who cannot afford to keep horses?’
‘Here, young man,’ said the Baron, ‘please select a few more trifles in the shape of horse-shoes.’
‘Perhaps an ash-tray?’ Mraczewski inquired.
‘Very well,’ said the Baron.
‘And perhaps an elegant inkwell, with a saddle and a little jockey and hunting-crop on it?’
‘I will take the inkwell with the saddle and jockey on it…’
‘Tell me, young man,’ said the lady to Klein, raising her voice, ‘are you not ashamed to stock such expensive trifles when our country is ruined? Is it not shameful to buy race-horses?’
‘Young man,’ said the Baron equally loudly to Mraczewski, ‘pray pack all these trifles—the ash-tray, the inkwell—and send them to me at home. You have a most elegant selection of goods here. Good-day to you! Adieu!’
And he hurried out of the door, turning back several times to look at the sign over it.
After the exit of the eccentric Baron, silence reigned in the store. Rzecki gazed at the door, Klein at Rzecki, and Lisiecki at Mraczewski who, being behind the lady, was able to make a very ambiguous grimace.
The lady rose slowly from her chair and approached the cash-desk at which Wokulski was seated.
‘May I inquire,’ she said in a trembling voice, ‘how much that gentleman who has just left owes you?’
‘The account of that gentleman in this store, madam, if he has one, is his business and mine,’ said Wokulski with a bow.
‘Sir!’ the fretful lady went on, ‘I am Krzeszowska, and that man is my husband. His debts concern me, for he has appropriated my estate over which a law-suit is progressing at this